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CHKDSK enhanced for Windows 8

by Alistair Lowe on 11 May 2012, 10:22

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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Every time Microsoft has released a new version of Windows, it has updated CHKDSK, even if it went unnoticed. Each time, CHKDSK became faster, however, with hard disk sizes and file counts doubling every 18 months, our friendly disk scanner and repair system has fallen behind, becoming relatively slower and slower. In Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced 'self-healing' for NTFS, enabling the system to perform immediate online repairs when certain types of file-system corruption occurred, avoiding the need for a scan altogether.

Whilst becoming less frequent, with improvements in hard disk reliability and self-repairing, disk errors do still occur and when they do, users can now face hours of disk scanning and repairing at boot-up, rendering their systems unavailable during this time, which, for something like a server, is unacceptable.

Microsoft Windows 8 CHKDSK States

Microsoft thinks it has the answer with Windows 8 and, aside from the usual speed enhancements that are made with each new edition of Windows, the firm has redesigned the way CHKDSK works by moving away from the black and white, healthy or unhealthy disk states to providing states for healthy, spot verification needed, online scan needed and spot fix needed.

Microsoft Windows 8 CHKDSK Process

In essence, the system now detects errors in-flight and, as usual, attempts to self-heal, with Microsoft boosting the number of error types that the Windows 8 CHKDSK can automatically handle. Failing to repair, CHKDSK performs a further 'spot scan' to identify if the error is related to a memory glitch or the hard-disk itself, ensuring that corrupted memory doesn't cause the system to kick off any unnecessary scans. After confirming that the error is real, an online system scan is started in the background, typically ran during moments of CPU idleness, identifying points of error, logging corrective measures and informing the user/admin.

Microsoft Windows 8 CHKDSK repair times

Thanks to the online detection of errors and their solutions, when an offline CHKDSK 'spotfix' is finally run, the system focuses only on damaged sections, keeping repair times proportional to the level of damage, typically taking only a few seconds to repair. With servers utilising cluster shared volumes, downtime itself can be eliminated, with the new ReFS file-system thanks to its RAID and ACID-like functionality, the entire process can be avoided.

Not bad if we do say so ourselves, Microsoft. For more details, visit Microsoft's blog.



HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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I think i could do this in Windows 95
Now this is the sort of thing I want from Windows 8 not a UI I don't like!
Some of the background features (like this) of Windows 8 are really great, it's just a shame I won't feel the benefit of them until (maybe) Windows 9 because there's no way I'm going to upgrade to windows 8 with that Metro interface. Thought it might grow on me (eventually), but the more I've used it the worse it feels.
cheesemp
Now this is the sort of thing I want from Windows 8 not a UI I don't like!
+1!!!!

Only thing that's worrying me is that with all this clever “behind the scenes” going on, how much information is going to be presented to the user. Specifically, it's be nice if the system warned if it was having to do these “in flight” repairs too often since that'd be indicative of a disk failing - and it'd be very desirable to get advanced warning of that!

Hopefully it'll be cleverer than the disk monitoring on my Ubuntu 10.04 system - that complains about once a week about a disk failing, which turns out to be my RAID-1 array (which is fine whenever I've checked).
Blademrk
Some of the background features (like this) of Windows 8 are really great, it's just a shame I won't feel the benefit of them until (maybe) Windows 9 because there's no way I'm going to upgrade to windows 8 with that Metro interface. Thought it might grow on me (eventually), but the more I've used it the worse it feels.

I totally feel the same. There are some great looking features but the interface is beyond horrid. I for sure will be sticking with Win7 unless they give user the option to turn metro off and have a default windows UI.